LCSW, 1 years of experience
New to Grow
I am a queer and latine Licensed Clinical Social Worker who has a strong passion for social justice, harm reduction, and compassion led treatment. I come with a warm, supportive, empowering, and empathetic approach that believes every client has the strength within themselves to rise above their current circumstances. I believe in dismantling harmful stigma people often carry within them around mental health or substance use in order to promote self-acceptance and self-love. I believe I cannot truly support a client without culture sensitivity and creating a nonjudgmental space where a client feels safe AND brave enough to come as their whole self. I believe in trauma informed, anti-racist, pro-women, pro-gender, and pro-queer orientated care.
In our first session, we will do a warm meet and greet where we will get to know each other more, understand what brought you in, what type of therapy are you looking for, what type of therapist you are hoping for, and what your goals are. We will review logistic material such as confidentiality. And last, we will be sure our match is what you are looking for. This is your treatment and I want to be sure you are connected to a provider you feel comfortable and safe with me.
When working with me you, you feel receive compassion, acceptance, and empathy. I believe in non-judgmental care that accepts a client where they are at, normalizing the journey of recovery, promoting self-acceptance and love, and being your biggest hype person. With me, we will reshape and rephrase the world around us to acknowledge the progress you are making, even if it's small. I will always meet you where you are at and never push you into a direction you aren't comfortable with. And, I believe in modifying and changing our therapeutic approach as you naturally grow and change. You can be honest with me on what is and what isn't working. I believe in collaborating as a team to best support your goals. You have more of the answers than you may know and I am here to support you along your journey.
As a clinical with a diverse background in clients I have served, I believe I can work with clients of different stages of change. Whether you are fully ready to commit to treatment or still feeling hesitant but curious, I will meet you where you are. Some areas I feel I can best support are substance use, mood disorders, personality disorder, PTSD/CPTSD, and culture related issues. I am most familiar with supporting people of color, women, queer identifying folks, folks with disabilities, and substance users. Regardless of your mindset and goal, I believe in shaping our treatment to meet you where you are at.
From how an environment is set up, to the way someone responds to you, even to how our relationship is structured, I believe there is a way to understand how your day to day is trauma informed in order to best support your healing and recovery process. I've used a trauma informed care for long term survivors of abuse, substance users, and queer and people of color.
Through approaching your thoughts with curiosity and understanding, I hope to look at how our behaviors can reflect new ways of thoughts of self to lead a more compassionate relationship to yourself. I believe in meeting thoughts with neutrality, understanding their purpose, and exploring how we can shape them into self-promoting thoughts. I've used CBT for folks navigating anxiety, depression, schizoaffective, and bipolar disorder.
Through my years working in inpatient psychiatry, I have been able to utilize DBT to work with a wide array of personality disorders, such as borderline, dependent, and paranoid. In my approach to using DBT, we will look at our thoughts and behaviors with duality in understanding the "yes, and", while learning coping skills such as cooling techniques, mindfulness, understanding relational dynamics, and emotional regulation.
Through years of working in the mental health field, I have studied and worked on understanding my therapeutic relationship with my clients and how they inform the overall care. My bringing curiosity to the room, we will explore the therapist and client dynamic to process past and current relational dynamics in order to explore unprocessed experiences and understand sense of self.
Understanding, exploring, and leading with the understanding of someone's culture is one of the most important frameworks I lead with. I believe in understanding how you define your culture, it's importance to you, and how it shapes what has brought you into therapy. Whether it is race, religion, gender, sexuality, or nationality, this is a place of acceptance and understanding of cultural diversity.